A “release to one, release to all” policy for FOIA will serve the public interest

Sunlight Foundation, Dec. 23, 2016

Dear Director Pustay,

We welcome the opportunity to comment upon the Department’s proposed “release-to-one, release-to-all” policy for fulfilling requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. The Sunlight Foundation strongly supports the proposal overall, with some specific concerns regarding individual components in the draft regarding overly broad exemptions and exceptions.

As a decade-old nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to using journalism, advocacy and technology to improving the transparency and accountability of our politics and government, we see great potential for this approach to improve public knowledge of the operations of government, reduce the costs of administering one of the core sunshine laws of the nation, and reduce asynchronies in the disclosure of government data that are providing an unintended subsidy to industry.